


Ice Cold

by Carbynn



Series: Royed Week 2018 [5]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Cuddling, Ed has a big stupid crush, Excessive blankets, M/M, Pining, The furnace is transpiring against them, fluff kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-07-01 20:30:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15781551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carbynn/pseuds/Carbynn
Summary: “I think the furnace went out,” Mustang says, and the bastard doesn’t seem to be that cold at all.“N-no shit.”





	Ice Cold

**Author's Note:**

> Day 5: Cold/Warmth

“I hope you had a pleasant trip,” Mustang says, ushering Ed through the door. It’s later than he expected, what with the train delays caused by the snowstorm that turned a five hour ride into a ten hour fiasco. It’s clear Mustang’s been waiting up for him.

“It was pleasant right up until I hit this fuck-off, sub-zero blizzard. It never gets this cold out east.” Ed drops his suitcase and begins shedding his snow-sodden, half frozen coat. “I forgot how goddamn frigid it gets here.”

“Just one of Central’s many charms.” Mustang reaches out to help him with the coat, spreading it out over several of the empty hooks by the door in an attempt to get it to dry faster.

The scarf and gloves follow suit, and finally Ed is free of his wintery anguish. Mustang’s house is warm and inviting, and Ed just wants to curl up under a thick blanket and sleep off as much of the train weariness as he can. 

After the Promised Day and Ed’s retreat back to Resembool with Al, he and Mustang had struck up something of an unexpected camaraderie. It had started with a letter, a grudging request Ed had sent during the course of research that had turned into an unbroken chain of correspondence spanning more than a year.

Ed’s research had landed him an interview with some bigshots at the university in Central, and Mustang had offered-slash-insisted that Ed use his ‘perfectly serviceable’ guest bedroom rather than shell out for a hotel and, well, Ed wasn’t exactly badly off, but he wasn’t pulling in the grant money from the state alchemist program anymore either, and he’d be an idiot to pass up a free bed.

Besides, he’d mostly gotten over his childish feud with Mustang. Mostly. And maybe possibly might have kinda sorta started liking him, and maybe a little bit too much.

Ed turns around to find that Mustang is staring at him, and he hates the way his heart leaps into his throat when he meets his dark eyes. “Why don’t you take a fucking picture,” he says, managing to recover at least a portion of his sense, and it only takes a portion to bitch at Mustang.

“My apologies.” Mustang looks just as surprised as Ed is that he’s been caught staring. “You look quite a bit different than the last time we met. The years have been good to you.”

Ed hopes Roy attributes the red on his face to the blistering cold. “Yeah well, you didn’t age as much as I thought you would have. Way fewer gray hairs than I expected.”

“I don’t have _any_ gray hairs.”

“Yeah, okay.” Mustang’s scowl is endlessly gratifying and it’s been too long since he’s gotten to see it. “Where’s this serviceable guestroom I keep hearing such good things about?” It’s late, and Ed doesn’t want to burden Mustang anymore than he already has, and what a novel feeling that is.

Mustang looks like it's only just occurred to him that Ed might want to actually sleep in his house instead of just standing in the entryway all night. "Of course, I'm sorry. It's just a little bit jarring to see you here in the flesh again after writing to you for so long.

"You can ogle me all you want in the morning." The returning flush on Ed's face seems to indicate that he made a very poor choice of words and now he's kicking himself for it.

Roy at least doesn't seem to notice the faux pas. He grabs Ed's suitcase off of the floor and beckons for him to follow as he starts off down the hallway.

The guest room is small but, as Roy promised, perfectly serviceable. He'd slept in worse places on military assignments than in small rooms on beds covered in pillows.

"There's a half-bath behind that door but I'm afraid if you need to shower you'll have to use the one in the hall." Roy sets his suitcase by the door. "I'll leave you to it."

"Thanks." Ed sits down on the edge of the mattress and looks over to Roy framed in the doorway, somehow still managing to look just as poised and regal as ever despite the lateness of the hour and the piss-poor lighting afforded to him by the light in the hallway and the small lamp burning on the bedside table. For a moment, Ed can't look away.

Roy catches and holds his eye contact but, and Ed's not sure who breaks it first, it breaks, though neither of them look away. 

"Goodnight, Edward," Roy says finally. "It's good to see you again." He pulls the door shut behind him when he leaves, plunging Ed into semi-darkness staring at the spot he had vacated.

Ed forces himself to stand up. He's struggling not to give into the temptation of just collapsing into bed, but goddammit, he's putting his pajamas on first if it kills him. Sleeping in travel clothes is the absolute worst, and he made that mistake too many times as a kid to keep making it now.

He eases into bed as soon as he's changed, burying himself in the blanket with a weary sigh. He hadn't been sure what it'd be like seeing Mustang after so long, and if the first few minutes were anything to go by, it was going to be a lot more miserable than he expected.

Al has been mocking him for months about having a crush on the bastard. Ed had denied it vehemently over and over again, because why the _fuck_ would he have a crush on _Roy fucking Musta_ ng? Plus, he's not some simpering schoolgirl. He doesn't _get_ crushes.

At least, he _didn't_.

The evidence was mounting and Ed, as a man of science first and foremost, couldn't ignore it anymore.

_Fuck_.

If he made it through this trip in one piece it'd be a miracle.

 

 

Ed's awoken a few hours later by an insistent, heinous cold. It's sunken straight through the blanket and right into his bones, and the automail is so bitterly frigid that the port is burning where it meets flesh. It takes all the willpower he possesses to force himself to swing his legs over the edge of the bed and stand.

He can barely take a step with the frozen automail locking up his nerves, and it takes him a pathetically long time to make it to the door but suddenly it’s swinging open.

“W-What the f-f-fuck, Mustang?” Ed manages through his chattering teeth.

“I think the furnace went out,” Mustang says, and the bastard doesn’t seem to be that cold at all, or if he is, he’s not showing it. Probably helps that one fourth of his limbs aren’t made out of metal.

“N-no shit.” Ed can barely control his shivering and it’s taking everything he has not to let his leg give out.

Mustang frowns. “Ed, are you alright?”

“P-P-Peachy.”

He doesn’t sound all that peachy, even to his own ears, and Mustang’s moving across the room and reaching out for him before Ed can even find the words ‘fuck’ and ‘off’ to string together. Mustang’s fingers brush his arm and he draws back with a quiet hiss. “You’re freezing.”

Ed wants to tell him no fucking shit but his mouth refuses to cooperate. Mustang goes for the blanket on the bed and drapes it over Ed’s shoulders, and even though it does nothing for him, he mutters something that’s supposed to be a thanks but probably ends up being incomprehensible.

“You’re getting hypothermic,” Mustang says, concern heavy in his voice. “We need to get you warmed up.”

He begins guiding Ed down the hallway and into the living room. Ed can barely fucking walk. His left leg is entirely numb except where it’s searing pain from the cold of the steel, but Mustang’s hold is firm and steady and he manages to get him situated on the sofa with little difficulty.

The blanket draped over the back of the sofa is dropped on Ed and then Mustang disappears for a moment before returning with an armful of blankets that he’s made materialize from somewhere unknown. One at a time, Mustang tucks them around Ed’s shivering form until he’s so weighted down with blankets he’s sure that even if his leg were working, he wouldn’t be able to get up if he wanted to.

Ed starts looking for the words to thank him, but Mustang doesn’t stick around waiting. He moves off to kneel in front of the fireplace, pulls on a glove he’s collected from the basket next to the glass doors, and snaps. The fireplace explodes in heat and brightness and, satisfied, Mustang turns back to Ed.

“I’m sorry for this,” he says.

Ed’s synapses are all probably frozen solid at this point, and he can’t for the life of him figure out what the fuck he’s supposed to be sorry for, but then Roy’s lifting the blankets and climbing underneath them next to Ed, shifting closer and closer until he’s near enough to drag Ed into his arms.

Mustang’s body is so warm that it almost burns, but Ed presses himself into it frantically, winding his arms around Mustang in return and burying his frozen nose in the collar of his pajama shirt, which causes Mustang to hiss from the shock of the cold, but he doesn’t pull away.

“You need body heat,” Mustang says by way of explanation once Ed has settled. “This is the fastest way to warm you up.”

“Probably won’t d-do any good,” Ed admits, and if he could kick himself he would. “The l-leg is too cold. It’ll, it’ll leach the heat.”

Roy looks down at him for a long minute of solid contemplation before speaking again. “Would it help to remove it?”

Ed’s absolutely horrified. “You wouldn’t like that.”

It’s one thing knowing that someone’s incomplete, knowing that one of the legs they stand on is metal and wire rather than muscle and bone. It’s something else entirely to have to see it.

“It makes absolutely no difference to me. My only concern is warming you up.”

It’s true, Ed won’t warm up with the automail dragging heat out of him, and he’s cold enough already that that might become more of a problem than it presently is.

And it’s not like his stupid crush on stupid Mustang ever had a chance of playing out anyway.

He struggles to work up the coordination to twist and curl his fingers around the back of his thigh where the connector is and push down hard enough to release. It finally clicks, and with a quick little jolt of pain up his thigh, the leg clatters to the floor.

He feels lost without it, defenseless and declawed, but Mustang doesn’t do anything but drag him close again. The warmth is better this time, and being in Mustang’s arms, even if it’s like this, is more exquisite than Ed could have imagined. Still, this must be nothing short of terrible for him, and Ed feels the need to at least attempt an apology.

“’M sorry you g-gotta do this,” he mumbles against Mustang’s shoulder.

“It’s been quite awhile since I’ve been curled up with someone this way.” That’s not much of an acknowledgement, and Ed doesn’t know what to make of it.

“Being c-curled up with someone you wanna be curled up with and being curled up with s-someone you have to be curled up with isn’t quite the same.”

Mustang’s hands sweep over the curve of his spine. “Who says I don’t want to be curled up with you?”

Ed thinks it’s possible he might have actually died. “W-What?” He draws away from Mustang’s shoulder to look him square in the face. He has to see what’s written there. “Why would you want to be?”

Mustang’s movements against his back don’t stop but he goes quiet for a few moments, resting his chin on top of Ed’s head. “Are you sure,” he begins finally, “that you want to examine that right now?”

Ed sighs into Roy’s shoulder, tightening his arms around his waist. He’s beginning to warm up a little, but things are still a little bit fuzzy and this definitely isn’t the right time to be having this kind of conversation, and he’s too shocked that there’s even a conversation to be had to really even process it “I guess not.”

“We can talk in the morning,” Mustang promises softly. “I think we have a lot to discuss.”

The fact that Ed’s heart is still functioning well enough to beat as hard as it’s beating is probably a good sign that his brush with hypothermia was mild at worst. “Do we?”

Nothing ever works out, and nothing is ever simple, but hope tangled with something else flutters in Ed’s chest when Mustang’s warm fingers brush through his hair. “We do,” he affirms.

Those two words do more to warm Ed than the stack of blankets and the fire ever had a chance of doing. “Thank fucking god.”

Mustang doesn’t say anything, just keeps on petting Ed’s hair and holding on to him like his life depends on it, and little by little the chill lifts and Ed’s finally warm again cradled against Mustang’s chest. He’s content and comfortable, and while he’s sure the conversation they’re going to have in the morning is going to drag out some uncomfortable admissions, for now, he’s happy to let the soothing heat carry him off to sleep.


End file.
